![]() HM Sloop Halifax (18) had lost several men to desertion in the Cheasapeake Bay region, and when the Leopard sent boats ashore at Norfolk, Virginia to replenish her water and stores, some of her officers encountered and recognized the men, signing up to serve in the United States Navy at a Rendezvous established by the officers of the Cheasapeake, which was fitting out there. In June 1807, much of the North American squadron was deployed in Cheasapeake Bay, off the Susquehanna, York and Potomac rivers, or off the capes of Delaware Bay, enforcing trade regulations concerning neutral American shipping and searching for French frigates rumoured to be operating along the eastern seaboard of the United States. It is the former that is of most interest here, as both the Leopard frigate and the Halifax sloop are in the 1806-7 ship sample, and deserters from the latter and the actions of the former were at the centre of the incident. These were the encounters between HMS Leopard and the USS Cheasapeake, and subsequently the tit for tat engagement between HMS Little Belt and the USS President. The tensions over desertion and impressment would culminate in two major naval incidents which nearly brought the United States and Great Britain to war in 1807. This was a period of growing tensions between the United States and British governments over trade disputes, neutral rights in merchant shipping during the wars with France, and the continued impressment of American merchant seamen by British naval vessels around the world. This was particularly the case after the Great Mutinies at Spithead and the Nore in 1797, the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and through the last years of the eighteenth century and the turn of the nineteenth. The problem of desertion, however, regardless of the size of the North American station, remained equally vexing to its commander-in-chief and senior officers. ![]() This was primarily because the British Navy followed the so-called Western squadron strategy, whereby most of its ships remained in home waters in a centre of gravity used to counter both possible French invasion or other major French fleet movements, rather than deploying large squadrons permanently on overseas stations. The duties of these vessels were predominantly reduced to trade enforcement and protection of the George's Bank and the Gulf of St Lawrence fisheries from American and other interlopers.Īfter the outbreak of war with Revolutionary France in 1793, the station gradually increased in size, but prior to 1812 it would not regain the heights of its former complement of men and ships reached during the War of Independence. Between 1783 and the outbreak of the French Revolutionary War in 1793, the establishment at the Halifax dockyard was designed to support only one 50-gun flagship, four small frigates, two sloops and a brig, and at times there were even fewer warships available than this. The North American squadron prior to the War of 1812Īfter the end of the War of American Independence in 1783, the size of the North American squadron was significantly reduced in both numbers of vessels and men, as it returned to its normal headquarters at Halifax, Nova Scotia.
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